About
Dr. Rania Siam is a Professor of Medical Foundations at Ross University School of Medicine (RUSM) in Barbados, where she also serves as Discipline Lead for Microbiology and Co-Director of the Multisystem Integration and Clinical Reasoning Module.
Her interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of environmental, microbial, and human health.
Her work spans metagenomic characterization of microbial diversity in extreme habitats, including deep-sea brine pools, antimicrobial resistance in urban microbiomes, and the genomic evolution of infectious diseases, with active investigations into influenza and emerging arboviruses.
Dr. Siam earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from McGill University and her M.B.B.CH. from Ain Shams University, followed by postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla California.
She has authored over 60 peer‑reviewed publications (H‑index: 30) and has secured more than $7 million USD in competitive research funding in resource limited environment.
Publications
- RZ Abdallah, AHA Elbehery, A Ouf, R Siam – Microbial Dark Matter Spearheading the Biogeochemical Cycle in the Solar Lake of Taba, Egypt – Current Research in Microbial Sciences, 2025
2. RZ Abdallah, AHA Elbehery, SF Ahmed, A Ouf, MN Malash, W Liesack, R Siam – Deciphering the functional and structural complexity of the Solar Lake flat mat microbial benthic communities – mSystems, 9 (6), e00095-24, 2024
3. J Wu, J Ouyang, H Qin, J Zhou, R Roberts, R Siam, L Wang, W Tong, … – PLM-ARG: antibiotic resistance gene identification using a pretrained protein language model – Bioinformatics, 39 (11), btad690, 2023
4. AHA Elbehery, E Beason, R Siam – Metagenomic profiling of antibiotic resistance genes in Red Sea brine pools – Archives of Microbiology, 205 (5), 195, 2023
5. A Khan, A El Hosseiny, R Siam – Assessing and Reassessing the Association of Comorbidities and Coinfections in COVID-19 Patients – Cureus, 15 (3), e36683, 2023
6. L Ziko, O AbdelRaheem, M Nabil, RK Aziz, R Siam – Bioprospecting the microbiome of Red Sea Atlantis II brine pool for peptidases and biosynthetic genes with promising antibacterial activity – Microbial Cell Factories, 2022
7. S Sonbol, R Siam – Abundance of integrons in halophilic bacteria – Canadian Journal of Microbiology, 2022
8. S Sonbol, R Siam – The association of group IIB intron with integrons in hypersaline environments – Mobile DNA, 2021
9. D Danko, D Bezdan, EE Afshin, S Ahsanuddin, … – A global metagenomic map of urban microbiomes and antimicrobial resistance – Cell, 2021
10. E Afshinnekoo, C Bhattacharya, A Burguete-García, … – COVID-19 drug practices risk antimicrobial resistance evolution – The Lancet Microbe, 2021
11. L Ziko, AHA Saqr, A Ouf, M Gimpel, RK Aziz, … – Antibacterial and anticancer activities of orphan biosynthetic gene clusters from Atlantis II Red Sea brine pool – Microbial Cell Factories, 2019
12. L Ziko, M Adel, MN Malash, R Siam – Insights into Red Sea brine pool specialized metabolism gene clusters encoding potential metabolites for biotechnological applications and extremophile survival – Marine Drugs, 2019
13. NA Hussein, SH Cho, G Laloux, R Siam, JF Collet – Distinct domains of Escherichia coli IgaA connect envelope stress sensing and down-regulation of the Rcs phosphorelay across subcellular compartments – PLoS Genetics, 2018
14. AHA Elbehery, RK Aziz, R Siam – Insertion sequences enrichment in extreme Red Sea brine pool vent – Extremophiles, 2017
15. AHA Elbehery, DJ Leak, R Siam – Novel thermostable antibiotic resistance enzymes from the Atlantis II Deep Red Sea brine pool – Microbial Biotechnology, 2017
16. SA Sonbol, AJS Ferreira, R Siam – Red Sea Atlantis II brine pool nitrilase with unique thermostability profile and heavy metal tolerance – BMC Biotechnology, 2016
17. M Adel, AHA Elbehery, SK Aziz, RK Aziz, HP Grossart, … – Viruses-to-mobile genetic elements skew in the deep Atlantis II brine pool sediments – Scientific Reports, 2016
18. GA Mustafa, A Abd-Elgawad, A Ouf, R Siam – The Egyptian Red Sea coastal microbiome: a study revealing differential microbial responses to diverse anthropogenic pollutants – Environmental Pollution, 2016
19. MetaSUB International Consortium – The metagenomics and metadesign of the subways and urban biomes (MetaSUB) international consortium inaugural meeting report – Microbiome, 2016
20. AHA Elbehery, RK Aziz, R Siam – Antibiotic resistome: improving detection and quantification accuracy for comparative metagenomics – OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology, 2016
21. A Kopf, M Bicak, R Kottmann, J Schnetzer, I Kostadinov, … – The ocean sampling day consortium – GigaScience, 2015
22. A Antunes, I Alam, MF Simões, C Daniels, AJS Ferreira, … – First insights into the viral communities of the deep-sea anoxic brines of the Red Sea – Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics, 2015
23. DK Ngugi, J Blom, I Alam, M Rashid, … – Comparative genomics reveals adaptations of a halotolerant thaumarchaeon in the interfaces of brine pools in the Red Sea – The ISME Journal, 2015
24. MK Saadeldin, H Shawer, A Mostafa, NM Kassem, … – New genetic variants of LATS1 detected in urinary bladder and colon cancer – Frontiers in Genetics, 2015
25. PN Demian, KC Horton, A Kajon, R Siam, … – Molecular identification of adenoviruses associated with respiratory infection in Egypt from 2003 to 2010 – BMC Infectious Diseases, 2014
26. M ElHefnawi, N Hassan, M Kamar, R Siam, AL Remoli, … – The design of optimal therapeutic small interfering RNA molecules targeting diverse strains of influenza A virus – Bioinformatics, 2011.
27. M ElHefnawi, O AlAidi, N Mohamed, M Kamar, R Siam, … – Identification of novel conserved functional motifs across most Influenza A viral strains – Virology Journal, 2011.